Freshworks Inc., the global SaaS company founded by Chennai-born entrepreneur Girish Mathrubootham, has announced its plans to acquire FireHydrant, an AI-powered incident management platform. The move marks another strategic step by Freshworks to deepen its presence in IT service management and strengthen its AI-led enterprise offerings. With this acquisition, Freshworks aims to help organisations manage IT incidents more efficiently and reduce service disruptions in increasingly complex digital environments.
Acquisition Expected to Close in Early FY26
According to the company, the acquisition is expected to be completed in the first quarter of Freshworks’ fiscal year 2026, subject to standard regulatory approvals and closing conditions. While the financial details of the deal have not been disclosed, the acquisition highlights Freshworks’ continued focus on building a comprehensive IT operations ecosystem through targeted inorganic growth.
The deal comes at a time when enterprises across the globe are looking for smarter, faster, and more automated ways to manage system outages and critical incidents.
FireHydrant’s Role in Modern Incident Management
Founded in 2018, FireHydrant has built a strong reputation for its incident management platform designed to help engineering and IT teams handle outages, system failures, and high-severity incidents. The platform uses AI to streamline incident response, improve coordination during critical events, and generate structured post-incident reviews.
FireHydrant’s solution allows teams to track incidents in real time, manage on-call schedules, automate workflows, and learn from past outages using data-driven insights. Its customer base includes several large global enterprises, reflecting strong demand for advanced incident management tools.
Building a Unified AI-Native ServiceOps Platform
Freshworks plans to integrate FireHydrant’s capabilities with Freshservice, its flagship IT service management product. The integration is expected to result in a unified AI-native ServiceOps platform that combines ITSM, IT operations, and incident management under one umbrella.
This unified approach is designed to eliminate fragmented workflows that many IT teams face today, where multiple tools are used separately for monitoring, alerting, incident response, and analysis. By bringing everything together, Freshworks aims to help organisations reduce downtime, respond faster to issues, and improve overall service reliability.
Strengthening Freshworks’ Enterprise Strategy
The FireHydrant acquisition aligns with Freshworks’ broader strategy of expanding its enterprise-grade offerings. Over the past few years, the company has been investing heavily in AI, automation, and analytics to serve mid-market and large enterprises more effectively.
Freshworks has steadily evolved from a customer support software provider into a full-stack enterprise SaaS company offering solutions across customer engagement, sales, IT service management, and operations.
Girish Mathrubootham’s Legacy and Company Growth
Freshworks was founded in 2010 by Girish Mathrubootham and Shanmugam Krishnasamy in Chennai. The company made headlines in 2021 by becoming the first Indian SaaS firm to list on Nasdaq. Since then, it has continued to expand globally while keeping a strong engineering presence in India.
Although Girish Mathrubootham has stepped back from day-to-day leadership and is set to fully exit the company in late 2025, his vision continues to shape Freshworks’ long-term strategy, especially in AI-driven innovation and global expansion.
What This Means for the Indian SaaS Ecosystem
Freshworks’ acquisition of FireHydrant sends a positive signal for the Indian SaaS ecosystem. It reinforces the idea that Indian-founded companies can build globally competitive enterprise software and lead consolidation in advanced technology segments like AI-powered IT operations.
As digital systems become more complex and downtime more costly, the demand for intelligent incident management solutions is expected to grow. With FireHydrant joining its portfolio, Freshworks is positioning itself to meet this demand while strengthening India’s footprint in the global SaaS landscape.